A new study published today in the journal, Risk Analysis, a publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, maps which U.S. counties are most at risk for water quality and how ownership and inequality intersect.
This study claims to be the first to combine nationwide geospatial data — water system violations, ownership of these systems, and social vulnerability — with a nationally representative survey of how people feel about the safety, quality and reliability of their water.
About two million people in the United States lack access to running water or indoor plumbing in their homes. Another 30 million people live where drinking water systems violate safety rules. Water privatization — the transfer of public water systems ownership and/or management to private companies — has been proposed as a potential solution to provide more Americans with safe, clean drinking water. But opponents argue that private companies may prioritize profits over public needs.
To investigate how private vs. public water systems affect water quality and equal access to safe, clean water, researchers mapped the distribution of water system ownership, water system violations and water injustice nationwide.
“Policymakers can use our findings to identify and prioritize enforcement efforts in hotspots, make improvements in infrastructure, and implement policies that ensure affordable and safe drinking water – particularly for socially vulnerable communities,” said lead author Alex Segrè Cohen, assistant professor of science and risk communication at the University of Oregon. “We found that violations and risks of water injustice tend to cluster in specific areas or hotspots across the country.”
Here are some of the key findings:
- The top 10 counties with the highest ranking for water violations were in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Oklahoma.
- The highest number of violations reported by a single water system was a public system owned by a local government in Wyoming county, West Virginia.
- The top 10 counties with the highest ranking for water injustice were in Mississippi (8 out of the 10), South Dakota and Texas.
- Hotspots of water injustice were more often located in areas with lower private system ownership. (This suggests that public water systems are not necessarily better at preventing violations, according to the authors).
- Living in a county with both high water injustice and a higher proportion of privatized water systems was associated with a greater concern or perception of vulnerability around water access and security – with concerns about water accessibility, safety and reliability.
Water system violations include failures to comply with regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act, including health-based violations such as exceeding maximum levels of contaminants, non-compliance with mandated water treatment techniques, and failure to follow monitoring schedules and communicate required information to customers.
The researchers define “water injustice” as the unequal access to safe drinking water that disproportionately impacts low-income households and people of color.
Researchers devised a county-level score based on the performance of local drinking water systems. The score was based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) and community social vulnerability using the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) Environmental Justice Index. These data were merged with a nationally representative survey of U.S. residents (collected in 2019) that measured how people rated their access to drinking water and the quality and reliability of water systems in their area, among other water injustice indicators.
Of the approximately 146,087 public water systems reported to the SDWIS in 2019, this study focused on community water systems (48,690) located in the contiguous United States, defined as systems that supply water to the same population year-round. Each community drinking water system can consist of multiple facilities; a total of 507,492 facilities make up of these 48,690 water systems.
“Our results suggest that privatization alone is not a solution,” said Segrè Cohen. “The local context, such as regulatory enforcement, community vulnerability, and community priorities, matters in determining outcomes.”
About SRA
The Society for Risk Analysis is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, scholarly, international society that provides an open forum for all those interested in risk analysis. SRA was established in 1980. Since 1982, it has continuously published Risk Analysis: An International Journal, the leading scholarly journal in the field. For more information, visit sra.org.
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